


The Frozen Wastes

by Crepuscular



Category: Starbound (Video Game)
Genre: Frackin' Universe Mod, Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-26
Updated: 2018-04-26
Packaged: 2019-04-28 06:35:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14443470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crepuscular/pseuds/Crepuscular
Summary: During his mission to uncover the fates of a famous research team, a Human encounters an unfathomable abomination. With no chance of escape, he must choose to either struggle against this impossible enemy or suffer a fate worse than death.





	The Frozen Wastes

\-- Mission: Frozen Wastes. Planet: Delta Freya II. Elapsed Time: 3 Days. Location: Elder Necropolis; Cthonic Halls.

In the many years you have lived in this horrible, chaotic little corner of the galaxy, you never thought you would be fighting something like this. You thought your knowledge would protect you. That knowing _what_ you were supposed to fight would keep you strong. That all those months of research through obscure materials and planning a careful strategy for this place would amount to something, _anything_ against this unknown threat. You thought insanity was nothing more than a biological fluke, the symptoms of a mind simply caught unprepared. You have done many things no sane man would ever do. You walked across a world made entirely out of flesh and bone, where pustulous clouds oozed forth digestive fluids and the red earth undulated and bled and _talked_ beneath your boots. You named that planet RS-838 and made it your crew's headquarters, just because you liked its sunsets so much.

But nothing could prepare you for this. You can find no comparison to the overwhelming nightmare whose presence you now entertain. It is beyond your biological limitations to perceive the true form of the undulating, non-euclidean mass of protoplasmic flesh. Polyps of golden light swim through a primordial ooze of four-dimensional darkness that endlessly draws inwards on itself. The _thing_ encompasses the gigantic hallway fully from height to width and heaven knows how deep. The powerful mind-altering antipsychotic drugs flowing through your brain do nothing to it as it desperately tries to to perceive the _thing_ and fails horribly. Prickly-toothed jaws grow and sink back into the abomination as it creates a fluting chorus that pierces through the insignificant blizzard. 

"Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!"

Tears run down your eyes. For the first time in years, you feel true fear. You remember when The Ruin devoured earth. The abomination starts to twist and morph as your mind clings to that familiar, understandable icon of fear. The blizzard overtakes your vision, turning everything a pallid white except for the _thing_. Tentacles erupt from its flesh and begin to flush with color as they encircle you. At the center of the tentacles blinks a massive, golden, hate-filled eye. Tentacles writhe about you, trapping you within a circle of oily, corrupting flesh. The Face of Ruin moans angrily as it drills its way into your senses with telepathic waves of pure, undiluted hatred. Pictures of the earth rise forth before your mind's eye and overtake your vision. An immaculate picture of earth is defaced as the planet's surface begins to bubble until its earthy crust bursts like a hive of pimples. As the earth undulates with pink, wriggling worms that force their way through living flesh. Swarms of towering, ring-lined tunnels like big red leeches surge gulp down entire cities one building at a time. You can hear the screams of a dying race as humanity tries in vain to escape its fate. The blizzard around you has long since faded from your mind. Even The Ruin has faded from existence, leaving you trapped within a white, wind-filled void.

The names of countless forbidden beings fill the blackness in a fraction of a fraction of a second. You know these names. You have even scoffed at them a few times as you researched countless texts for this mission. But you are not laughing any more. Not as the weight of their fundamental truths bears down upon you. Not as The Shoggoth, the key to thousands of horrible truths, twists itself into the lock of your knowledge-hungry nature and clicks it open. Your brain desperately scrambles to parse the sudden _redefinition_ that floods through the open door. Names now too great and too _real_ for your feeble body to comprehend: Hastur; Azathoth; Kurōzu-cho; She Who Thirsts; Lord Antharg; Morgoth Bauglir; Tuunbaq; The Bydo. . . Their names and the names of countless other horrors come alive and twist into hideous, inconceivable forms. You once thought these beings nonexistent, but now you are faced with irrevocable truth. Their presences loom over you and all about you and everywhere in the cracks of your mind so that you cannot escape their gaze no matter how far you run. It is as if the heads of a thousand truths have turned to acknowledge your existence all at once, only to see nothing but a frail, simpering beast. 

You can't do it. You can't stand up to this thing. There is no hope, no future. All you are and will ever be will be swallowed up by that which you will never understand.  
But then, the pale void starts to dim. The black words swarming all around you begin to blend in. 

You hear a voice. Different from the rest. Kinder. Warmer. Your hands are still gripping your warhammer. You grip it tighter. For a second, the heads turn away. The voice repeats itself with greater clarity. A sweet and comforting voice the color of green that carries the faint smell of a summer breeze through your helmeted face. It reaches into your chest and caresses your panicking heart, and then cradles your soul gently. Its hands remind you of your family. You remember the people that escaped Earth. You remember that heroic Protector who rose her blade against the ancient terror. She who raised her sword and cut down the actions of a fanatical group. The black void begins to fade. Reality as you perceive it begins to rush back to you. Sound flushes back into your ears and the bitter cold wind bites your skin again. As you gaze upon the abomination before you, you remember your anger. The voice smiles. It tells you that it wants to dance with you this day, in a battle like no other. That together, you'll kill this thing or die trying. You hear another heart beating nearby. Somewhere behind you, massaging the vulnerable shoulders beneath your Densinium-plated exosuit. She will help you see, the feminine voice says. She will help you see, and then you must fight together. 

The names in your head remain there. But the eyes have left your view, their faces now turned away. For a moment, you can breathe again; they are gone. You remember the names, but somehow you find it in yourself to not care about them. To not care about anything other than the enemy directly in front of you. You push against the brittle glass wall of your terror until it begins to crack. You grind your teeth into a grin. That's it! That's what you needed! You scream madly and charge forward, your augmented legs driving you forward with a ferocious speed. The flame jets of your hammer explode with life as you swing it down. It impacts the inconceivable flesh with enough force to rip through the skin and spill forth its twilit guts. Even though your tongue does not touch the blood that gushes forth from the shoggoth's wound, you can taste it. Sweet and juicy and soft like a big, meaty marshmallow; a fascinatingly tangible flavor from an intangible being. You gasp another breath of fresh air from behind your helmet, as if you were taking a break after a long jog. Somehow, someway, the creature is bleeding. It screams just like you do. There is a loud, confused scream as the abomination briefly reels back from the touch of your hammer. With the taste of its blood, the images of your mind vanish. 

In their place is a gigantic, oily black blob full of snarling mouths and malicious yellow eyes. A shoggoth as your mind's three-dimensional eyes are capable of perceiving, and that is just how you want it to be. Even the shoggoth itself seems to pause in surprise as some small, fundamental part of itself _breaks_. As some small but important part of itself is forcibly assimilated into three-dimensional space. It reacts with anger. Part of its oily body lurches forward into a tentacle that punches with enough force to shatter your ribs and send you crashing across the floor and into a pillar. As you grunt from the pain, you feel true fear. But you welcome the gift of pain as it forces the rest of your mind back into reality. You feel true courage. You feel true, unadulterated excitement. You slam the head of your hammer down into the ancient tiles to catch yourself as you fall out of the crater your body made in the pillar. Without your instruction, your exosuit accesses the hammerspace of your Matter Manipulator and administers a full cocktail of your most powerful performance-enhancing drugs. They fill your body within seconds, and as they finish doing so you start to grin. Your bones crack wetly as they rearrange themselves beneath the regenerating sections of your armor. You raise your head up and stare at the shoggoth. Your ribs crack in your chest as your lungs force out a long, wheezing laugh. You hear a womanly laugh overlaying your own. Together, your laughter grows mad with excitement. And as your flesh and bones stitch themselves back up with unreal efficiency, you raise the blade once more. Sound returns to your ears. The wind is howling fiercely. The shoggoth is charging hard and fast. 

"You bleed!" We scream together as you avoid its powerful swings and sever its attempts at psychically dominating your mind. "We can make you bleed! That means you can die! Bleed more for us! Die, bleed, die!" 

The shoggoth's fluting cries echo throughout the accursed tunnel. The cries peter out as you break and burn the nightmare down piece by bloody piece. As you suffer the strikes of cannons of bone, beams of searing light, and tendrils of pure digestive agony. The fight seems to span on for an eternity, each attack and counterattack permanently engraving itself in your feeble grey matter. 

But eventually, it ends. You raise the hammer one last time. The force of the impact creates a wave of fire that engulfs the shoggoth's body and causes it to combust. The gigantic mass of oily tar screams as its entire body is engulfed by seemingly mundane flames. Parts of itself throw themselves off of the great burning mass like rats fleeing a sinking ship. They form into plump, oily worms that bounce and squirm away from your wrath. You crush each of them and ignite them as the drugs start to fail.  
Soon, even the blizzard falls silent. The shoggoth stops burning.  
It is done. The shoggoth is dead. Or at least as dead as an abomination like itself can be. 

Slowly, you drag yourself from the battle. You slump forward. You reach the end of the corridor. No teleporter in sight. Nowhere left to go.  
Not that this place would have one. It is far too ancient. You stagger and curse from your injuries. The drugs are starting to wear off; the immense warmth provided by them is fading. Your bones remain broken, your organs remain ruptured. And the pain is creeping back, slowly but surely. You collapse, unable to breathe properly. Your empty stomach is swimming in pain. Your armor is in pieces now. The bodysuit underneath is insulated against the sub-freezing conditions, but the small breaches in it do not bode well for your survival in the next few minutes. 

You are starting to shiver. You try to access your emergency escape system. You try to contact your ship's artifical intelligence lattice. There is no reply. Something is jamming the teleportation signal. Probably some eldritch technology in this facility, still running even after thousands of years of neglect. You give up and fall to your knees, unable to maintain balance any longer. You are going to die here for good, aren't you? Your ship's cloning system will not be able to save you this time. At least you managed to stop a cosmic horror, you think to yourself. Whatever person was with you during the fight is gone now. You can no longer feel their presence. Yet somehow you know they are still there. At least you won't die alone. 

You hear the snow in front of you crunching as a pair of strange, alien boots appear before your vision. 

"You killed it. You killed the shoggoth." 

"You have my respect, stranger. I am impressed. Perhaps. . . perhaps you do deserve to live after all. The other Precursors were far too proud to admit that of lesser races. That some among them were capable of great things not unlike yourself." 

You hear something _click_ and _whirr_ to life. 

"Here. I was saving this personal teleporter for myself. I was waiting for someone important to give it to. But it seems you already found her. It can carry you both to safety. You will not remember this encounter. You will not remember anyone you have met here. Once you leave, you must never come back. Yet you must also never forget what you have learned here, lest you repeat your race's mistakes. Let your wisdom guide you, not your lust for knowledge. My people are long-dead. But yours?" 

There is a chuckle. "Your race is only just beginning. And perhaps with people like you, your race can avoid the same fate as my own." 

"In return, please take care of her. She was my best friend. She deserves a second chance at life, unlike me. Farewell, stranger." 


End file.
